Stumbling through the door of his studio, Kandinsky had accidentally come face to face with abstract art. It was immediately clear to him, Anton said, that a painting didn’t have to depict any recognizable object. Art was set free, artists were relieved of the tiresome burden of representation, of depicting boring external reality. But Kandinsky insisted that this did not relieve them of the artistic responsibility of expressing genuine human feeling in their work. It was to be two more years before he was to intentionally create such a revolutionary non-representational painting, one composed only of colour, form, and light.
At least this was the gist—the abstract, so to speak—of Anton’s story. My mind had wandered off at times, instead of doing what it usually did when I was stoned, which was to become totally engrossed in what was going on around me. (Perhaps the grass had actually been cut with bergamot.) At one point, I was out in the dark, traffic-congested streets with the colour-blind Miranda, negotiating the external reality of the traffic lights, the reds and greens that she had trouble seeing. Like Kandinsky encountering a painting composed only of bright patches of colour, I was confronted with a strange object composed of alternating bright circles of light.
I tried to sort out how Miranda read the lights. By position and sequence, I guessed. Was it red on top and green on the bottom? Or vice versa? I don’t drive much, but surely I should remember that. Anyway, amber, which she could see, was in between. After amber came red; after red, green; after green, amber once again. No doubt this is less complicated when you aren’t stoned.
Miranda drove even less frequently than I did, and now I could understand why. Her car was a big, unwieldy, old-fashioned station wagon left to her by her parents. I imagined them out on the foggy highway in their other car, the so-called subcompact in which they’d had the fatal accident, crawling through swirling, colourless patches of fog, and it struck me how the car’s inauspicious classification suggested the gruesome nature of the event. The tiny car had been completely subcompacted, absolutely demolished, atomized.
It recalled those bewildering experiments in subatomic physics that the artist who lived at the Cape Pine lighthouse had told us about. Charged subatomic particles are sent travelling in opposite directions, at the speed of light, through particle accelerator, or collider, tunnels built like racetracks. They collide head-on, producing even smaller, more exotic subatomic particles.
The ultimate aim of all this is to answer the Big Question of subatomic physics: What is the universe made of? Or, what is matter? The ultimate archive, perhaps, though impersonal, inaccessible, theoretical—one we can’t even see. Some scientists, in fact, believe that most of the universe consists of invisible matter, so-called dark matter—a darkive of unimaginable proportions.
On a more personal, or human, level, however, perhaps the fundamental archive is the cell, the most elementary particle of life, of animate matter. Unlike the atom, it is at least visible microscopically, some, like hens’ eggs, even with the naked eye.
Anton had become very animated—inspired, perhaps, by the lingering spirit of Christmas. He began to sing: “Here we go with Wassily among the red and green…” Drunk and stoned, he was making up the words as he went along, to the tune of the old “Wassail Song.” Miranda and I joined in, making up words of our own, humming at times, la-la-la-ing at others, till we all began to laugh so much we couldn’t sing anymore. Unnaturally, plaintively happy we seemed, the three of us there on the rug, beneath the glow of the Christmas tree, in the merry month of May, as if we were rehearsing a sad farewell.
Anton has become a “Protector of the Plover,” in response to an ad in the Globe and Mail. It featured an endearing picture of the little creature standing on tiny legs near its roost among beach rocks and sand, wings raised as if in surrender, exposing its pure white downy underbelly. Below the picture was a plea: “The Piping Plover needs you. Become a Protector of the Plover today.” The ad promised “an exclusive Protector’s canvas tote bag” as reward for a monthly donation.
“This little shorebird,” it explained, “is endangered throughout its range in Canada, from the Prairies to the east coast. The Piping Plover doesn’t gather sticks and debris to build its nest; it simply roosts down into the rocks and sand on shorelines. The shape and colour of the eggs protect them from hungry seagulls, but not from the feet of walkers or the wheels of ATVs.”
Anton taped this picture to the fridge, right in his line of vision whenever he took his usual seat at the kitchen table.
“I think now I want to find him,” he said one evening after supper, but he may not have meant the piping plover. Though he was gazing at the picture on the fridge, his eyes had a glazed and faraway look.
It was the same look I had seen on his face one evening after supper in late March, spring by the calendar, though it still looked like the middle of winter. “We will go there,” he said, right out of the blue, managing to sound half-hearted, determined, and resigned all in the same breath. I knew it was Cormack he was referring to, though he hadn’t mentioned the place since discovering his father’s name on the list of ninety-two hopeful soldier-farmers in the government archives. “We will go when the snow melts,” he added, but whether it was in search of his father it was hard to say. He turned his face toward the kitchen window and stared at the banks of snow in the front garden, still up to the naked limbs of the trees. It had been a warm, bright, false-spring day, and perhaps his blood had begun to stir. Little did he know what Newfoundland endurance tests lay ahead: April, May, and June. But half-heartedness was perhaps what he was feeling most of all.
About a week after Miranda’s birthday, he filled the canvas tote bag with toiletries and a first aid kit. “For our trip,” he said, as I sat watching him. I had suggested leaving on the Victoria Day weekend, which was only a couple of weeks away. I had arranged, luckily, as it turned out, to take a few extra days off work.
On the day before the holiday weekend, Anton got involved in an altercation in the Square, and even though he was the one attacked, he was threatened with charges of vandalism and defacement of private property. I thought I might end up being charged as well—accessory to the crime, accomplice after the fact—or at least subpoenaed as a witness.
On the day in question, Friday, the seventeenth of May, the Square was full to overflowing with the sort of vehicles that Anton hates. Huge vans and trucks and SUVs—Rams, Grand Caravans, Land Rovers, Explorers, Pathfinders, Blazers, Sierras, and Suburbans—had rammed, roved, and blazed their way over the urban and suburban terrain and were now filling the parking lots and the spaces in front of the parking meters, while their owners were inside stocking up on provisions for the first excursion out of town after the long winter.
On our way to the Square to pick up a few supplies ourselves, Anton had seemed unusually agitated and intent, or intent on agitation might be a more accurate way of putting it. He had been noticeably edgy, in fact, ever since he’d received his Greenpeace bumper stickers in the morning mail. When we got there, the vehicle congestion, even worse than usual, no doubt had upset him even more. He had a sheaf of bumper stickers under his arm, and, while most of the drivers were inside the stores, he was obviously going to take the opportunity to emblazon the rear of some of their vehicles.
Halfway down the long line of parked vehicles in front of the supermarket, he stopped behind a long, tall, black vehicle with opaque windows, like a two-storey hearse. It was a Chevrolet Suburban, licence plate number a provocative HAA 463, with its engine idling. A despicable two and a half kilometres to the litre, Anton said, only half what the manufacturers claimed, which was bad enough. On its ample bumper he placed his first sticker: I’m changing the climate. Ask me how. He was standing back to admire it when a door burst open, cracking the sealed black surface of the cab like a lid lifting up off a coffin. A large outraged Lazarus, a man who matched the size of his vehicle, jumped out, rushed to the back, took one look at Ant
on’s handiwork and said, charmingly, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Before Anton had a chance to reply, the front of his T-shirt, which said Imagine, was reduced to a large fistful of cloth, and he was pulled forward and either head-butted or body-bounced, or both, bumper stickers flying as he hit the pavement. His assailant pulled himself menacingly erect, hands on his hips, and expanded his chest as if to proudly display the logo on his own T-shirt—to deliver another message, perhaps—in response to Anton’s bumper sticker. Bull Arm, it said, the Trinity Bay construction site of the huge Hibernia drill rig that we’d been hearing so much about.
Anton decided—wisely, I thought—not to get up, so the man turned away, bent down to examine the bumper sticker more closely, furrowed his brow, and tried half-heartedly to peel it off. Anton, now in a sitting position with his arms shoring him up, looked on nervously but attentively. The front of his T-shirt was still in a knot, but there was no blood on his face, or any other sign of a wound.
The man turned and looked at Anton again. “You fucking defaced my veecal,” he said.
He turned and saw me and raised his eyebrows, as if I’d been invisible before. Coward that I am, I was standing well to the side, and had decided to stay there unless things really got out of hand. I had never been in a fight in my life, and, at my age, and with this enraged beast as my first opponent, I didn’t think it would be a good time to start.
“Are you with him?” he asked.
“Michael Lowe,” I exhaled, tentatively extending my hand, but thankful for the chance to intervene. “This is Anton Aalders, from Holland.”
Anton was on his feet now, but he kept his distance, his face still registering alarm.
“He vandalized my veecal,” he said to me. “I’m gonna have you charged!” he shouted at Anton.
“I charge you with assault,” Anton said, as if he were a policeman making an arrest.
I half expected him to assault Anton again, but he just looked at him fiercely. His cellphone rang. He removed it from a sort of holster attached to his belt.
“Yeah,” he said flatly, then listened attentively, looking toward the Dominion supermarket windows. On the wall above the windows I noticed for the first time the ragged black graffiti—And Life shall have no—spray-painted above the Dominion sign. I wondered if this was just an isolated literary prank or part of the wider ongoing protest against the blanket supermarketing of St. John’s: on sports fields, in memorial parks, in historic buildings, on the forlorn, abandoned sites of orphanage crimes, anywhere and everywhere they could fit one in. Anton had taken part in an anti-supermarket protest himself. A huge cloth banner with the words “Supermarket Opening Soon” had been draped across the front of the Colonial Building. Secured with rope to all six Ionic columns, it blocked the main entrance. Police were called to remove it and disperse the protesters.
“The dark ones with the spongy centres,” I heard Anton’s assailant say, and his face took on a warmer cast. “And don’t forget the Deet.”
When he replaced the phone, his face hardened again and his eyes narrowed. Neither one of us had moved an inch.
“I’m gonna have you charged,” he repeated. “I want your name and address. You’re gonna be hearing from the police or my lawyer.”
I gave him our names again, and our address and phone number, and he entered the information into his newfangled phone as if he were making a call.
“What’s your name?” Anton said bravely as he was doing this. When he finished, he took a few steps in Anton’s direction.
“Dick,” he said harshly, glaring at him. Never had a so-called Christian name sounded more un-Christian. “Parsons,” he added, with extra plosive power.
“I got your licence number,” Anton said, pushing his luck.
“Shove it up your arse,” said Dick, turning to go, and he brushed so close to me as he went past I could still smell his Old Spice aftershave half an hour later.
That evening, instead of packing, I began preparing my testimony. If I were called into court to testify, and it looked as if I would be, to bear witness to what had happened to Anton in the Square, I vowed I wouldn’t make the mistake I’d made the first time I’d innocently wandered in.
In March I’d gone to court to contest, to protest, a forty-five-dollar ticket for parking overnight on the street in front of my house. I’d prepared a high-minded, a high-principled, case, had been beating the bushes for weeks on the high moral ground. I would speak with the vehemence, the passion, of a Miles Harnett. My themes, besides innocence, were ignorance, lack of intent, extenuating circumstances, mercy, justice…
Judge Gradgrind presiding: “Not themes, but facts. In this court, we want nothing but facts, sir; nothing but facts. A man in your profession should be acquainted with facts. Are you the owner of a blue Toyota Tercel hatchback, licence plate number BAD 123?”
“Yes, your Honour.”
“Was this vehicle parked overnight on the street on December 4, 1995, between the hours of 1 a.m. and 7 a.m.?”
“Yes, your Honour.”
“Is this a photograph of your vehicle, your house, and your street?”
“Yes, yes, yes, your Honour.”
“Well, my good man, you are in contravention of city ordnance number SJ918431294617. No parking on the street from December 1 to March 31 in order to facilitate snow removal.”
“Even when there is no snow on the street, your Honour, and no forecast of snow, and, therefore, it follows as the night the day, no need to remove said snow?”
“Yes, yes, yes. Irrelevant, out of order, bordering on contempt, respectively. Guilty as charged. Next case.”
No, I wouldn’t make that mistake again. What kind of an archivist was I, anyway? I hadn’t even looked in THE FILES, at the transcripts of similar cases, investigated technicalities, precedents, loopholes, flaws in the laws. I’m changing my testimony. Ask me how.
This time, if asked to give evidence, I would dispense with excuses and motives and high-minded pleas and principles and fall back on my humble stock-in-trade: documents—texts, if you will—facts, words. In the end, we are left only with words. In this case, though, quite a few words: in enamel, chrome, ink, and paint; on metal, cloth, paper, and wood; words moulded, etched, printed, and painted; spoken and written down before their sounds vanished into the air. Though Anton himself, the ex-archivist, was undoubtedly on the side of the deconstructionists, who decried this fact fetish, this document fetish, this word fetish, this worship of false gods in the “cult of the archive,” I would, nevertheless, be on his side, for it seemed to be the cult of the court as well.
My mind had recorded a number of facts: the name of Anton’s assailant, Dick Parsons, which we’d both written down; the name of his vehicle, Chevrolet Suburban; its licence plate number, HAA 463; and the Bull Arm logo on the attacker’s T-shirt. This seemed to be the sort of evidence my previous interrogator had been looking for, but it was such a bare paltry exhibit that another part of my mind, ignoring recent history, immediately began to extrapolate from it a stirring defence of Anton’s ideals, his noble obsession with saving his country and the world from environmental disaster. Is that not important, your Honour? Not only had the huge idling vehicle provoked him, I submitted, but also its laughing licence plate. The bull-necked attacker’s Bull Arm T-shirt, though sea-blue, had made him see red. The graffiti above the Dominion sign had inspired and emboldened him. The benign bumper sticker—I’m changing the climate. Ask me how—was surely only an invitation to civic engagement and moral responsibility. Is that not important, your Honour?
As it turned out, luckily for both of us, I’m sure, we didn’t have to go to court after all, though we spent an anxious weekend waiting for a knock on the door. We heard nothing more from Dick Parsons, his lawyer, or the police.
Anton was too upset to leave on Saturday or Sunday, but was fee
ling much better by Monday. So, on the final day of the Victoria Day weekend, when every other Townie was returning to St. John’s from the ponds and rivers and woods of the Newfoundland interior, another European and his native-of-Newfoundland guide set off in the wake of the first European to walk across it almost two centuries before—a very cold wake, indeed. I was no Joseph Sylvester, however. I had only driven, or been driven, across the Island, and only once since we (almost) finished the drive in ’65. In the spring of 1981, in the back of a commodious rented van, with a surprisingly fun-loving fonds of archivists, I had gone out to a regional conference in Corner Brook. This time it would be a humble hatchback Tercel, though newly tuned up and equipped with four new high-performance tires—Pirellis, on Anton the experienced truck driver’s advice.
We set off in search of the piping plover, the Burnt Cape cinquefoil, the Nightingale of the North—all the rare and wild and distant things that Anton now spoke of instead of his father, and that it seemed we might be more likely to find. Our tentative destination, though—theoretical, if you will, more overdue west than due west—was the far-flung, west-coast town of Cormack.
20. NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY
A proverb, one might say, is a ruin which stands on the site of
an old story and in which a moral twines about a happening like
ivy around a wall.
—Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller”
The proper season had arrived in which to set off…Uncertainty of result waved over my determination.
Before beginning his journey across the Island with Joseph Sylvester, William Cormack had “tried his fidelity” by taking a brisk, warm-up hike from St. John’s to Placentia and circling back to town by way of Trinity Bay and Conception Bay, a distance of about 150 miles. Then they sailed from St. John’s to Bonaventure, on the west side of Trinity Bay. On his passage down Trinity Bay to Smith Sound, about 6 miles southwest of Bonaventure, Cormack witnessed an unnerving sight, which he might have read as a premonition.
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